


[Meta] Baffling quandaries of 3.20

by wanderlustlover



Series: Hawaii Five-0 Season Three Meta [4]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Some conversation about Steve's background, and how his timeline doesn't add up. Again.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 0: Pre-Air Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> Some conversation about Steve's background, and how his timeline doesn't add up. Again.

Where do I even begin? 

How about before I even start this, we point out the following words are not a denigration toward Steve McGarrett or Catherine Rollins, but toward the possible (yet still unproven until airing) actions and choices of the writers and show runner. 

We have release shots of 3.20 with the only familiar faces being Steve, Catherine, Joe, and Steve’s thus-far “unnamed” best friend in arms.

(Though I can remember Lenkov telling someone on twitter everyone in the main team will appear in 3.20, due to someone asking about Scott Caan’s shooting schedule at that point. Though I can promise you if all we get of THE ENTIRE CAST OF THIS SHOW is the very beginning or end, I will be disappointed.

But I digress. That is not the point of this write up. Enough people will hit that one up themselves.)

Let’s go down the list of military background questions/consideration/confusions that literally smack me like a glass wall the moment I look at these pictures —

1\. Why is the rest of The Five-0 team not involved with this, after the proof we saw in Season Two, that they are capable? Is it because this is an official mission?

1A. If so, if it is an official mission, why (and literally how) is Cath involved, because she would not be anywhere near the rate (the Navy term for the Army’s ‘rank’) or training Steve, the supposed “best ever seen” SEAL, has? Not past or present if she is *only* a ship-side Intelligence Officer. 

2\. Second on this rate thing, I have two very different questions about this Steve background flash thing:

2A. How does this story fit into the fact we’re told in Episode 1 Steve has spent the last five years with the SEALs chasing the Hesse boys, because that would be right then, correct? This should be the chase that acquires Anton, while Victor is scott free away (about to capture John McGarrett), right? 

2B. Once, again, on the rating side (which runs and rules everything in the military), who is this story being told to? Because there is no one on the team (Danny, Chin, Kono, Max, Everyone), nor Catherine, nor Doris, who would have the proper access to be hearing classified SEAL team mission intel. So I’m very very very TOUCHY about this whole idea’s layout in the upcoming mission. 

The only person that falls into this box of having proper qualification might be Joe. Maybe. That’s not even definitely a true fact though, because Joe was an instructor, but he wasn’t currently on the team or part of the mission in question. And presently he is a retired/honorably discharged officer, with a retired/discharged not current rate. Meaning he really shouldn’t have access to anything classified on any level either now. 

3\. If this is a military mission or isn’t, either way, where is the REST of the team? I don’t even mean the Five-0 team. I mean the fact you should have at least five to ten people with you again, like in season two. Please do not tell me you except me to think one SEAL and one officer can take on NC together. 

(Picture 7 at least looks like there are other uniformed people, so I’m trying to cling to this. Possibly in a way that will be a frying pan to the head soon, but I’m trying. Guys. I need some reality in your military use.)

I really, really, really have a lot of feelings about us going into this episode. And the want for them not to be pussy footing and character inserting things that would never fly logically or legally with the US Navy (especially if the only reason is ‘simply because a show wants to showcase a power couple being BAMF together’). 

Please, please, please be better than my fears, episode, because I so desperately want to know about Steve once-upon-a-time having a man-at-arms best friend during his service time still, too.


	2. -- Steve's Military Career --

According to Jameson, in 1.01 Steve went to Annapolis, spent five years in ONI (Naval Intelligence), and then six years with the SEALs at the beginning of the show.

Which charts out like this

  1. _Five-0 Task Force_ — 2010-2013 (age 34-36/37)
  2. _SEALs_ \- 2005-2009 (Age 29-34)  — Includes the time for 5 years chasing the Hesse brothers
  3. _SEALs & Platoon training_ \- 2004-2005 (Age 27-28)
  4. _Naval Intelligence_ \- 1999-2004 (Age 22-26)  — Likely, but not directly canon linked, includes his ‘several’ Iraq/Afganistan Tours
  5. _Annapolis_ - 1995-1999 (Age 18-21/22)



This timeline? Even with it’s year discrepancy somewhere? Works so so so so well logistically it’s not even funny. Even when the show cannot decide if Steve was 15 or 16 when he got kicked out/packed off from his house. This is an actual, factual hard to argue with growing service career record where everything fits and continually pushes in a deeper, truer, harder, singularly minded direction. 

> ~*~

I’m missing links for the next two things I’m going to say, but I found them while researching the internet for Steve’s background before fic or game writing. Which was that Lenkov said Steve originally came out of Annapolis straight into the SEALs (at 22) and that he met Cath in Naval Intellegence, while undercover with the SEALs (god knows, what time, when, how).

Both of them seem drastically unlikely in order. I mean it’s not impossible for a fresh faced Annapolis graduate to get directly into the SEALs, without a tour in the Navy first, but it’s drastically unlikely. So all of this I waved off as things said by The Man Behind the Curtain but still not placed anywhere near the show itself. Thus making it Quasi-Canon/Not-Canon, like everything else in hopeful commentary and deleted scenes.

Canon is only what rolls across the screen on the tv.

> ~*~

So this week, we actually have a timestamp circa 3.20 for the year of Steve’s SEAL Training as December 2000 ([we see it with him & Freddie in the surf on the beach](http://five0caps.tumblr.com/post/48274658459)). Which throws the whole chart out of whack again. 

Because he’s still in cold water conditioning in the scene, it’s likely he’s not near the end of his SEALs training year at all, probably only about halfway. Through BUD/s, static jumping, Free Fall, and TAO. Smacking him somewhere in the last 19 weeks of his training year at Coronado. Putting his graduation in the middle-ish of 2001. Making him a SEAL in mid-2001.

  1. Making him 25 when he became a SEAL. (2001)
  2. But having **nine** years in the SEALs then. (2001- _2010_ )
  3. And only **three** years in Naval Intelligence. (1996-1999)



Which makes one of the two wrong. Jameson or the timestamp. Just like Steve’s earlier age (or the canon claim of him being a starting, star quarter back in his sophomore year, as Laura pointed out a second ago).

(It, also, lines up Freddie and Cath knowing Steve nearly a decade, which leaves so much room for commentary on people who never got mentioned and relationships that never went anywhere or needed to, or people who would have known people long enough to never lie to them about such important/dumb things). 

I’m just such a crazy, absolutely accurate, detail person things like this float around my head, picking themselves apart until I can be right or wrong or things line-up or drastically don’t.  And this is another one of those canon moments when nothing lines up properly with the real world 


	3. Freddie & Steve vs. Cath & Canon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
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> 

It really does say something if this is the week-ish before canon starts. His best friend is talking about Cath being “the real deal” (with still no canonical point for when she showed in his life, how many years) but Steve doesn’t look very excited or please about the prospect of Cath, Marriage and Babies in the same zip code with him. 

A. Then he see’s her exactly four/five times in the next two years. Canonically never calls except for favors. Canonically never makes it to dinner. Canonically never mentions her to anyone. The line is trying too hard especially when you back up Season 1-Season 2 canon right on to it. 

B. He doesn’t even tell her what happened to Freddie, who obviously knew/met her, until three years later. (Which I still have issues with because Black Out Seal Op that she has no clearance to be near or hear about. Which does not touch yet how much I started screaming about the fact he was talking about it on a public plane where anyone could overhear him.)

.

If anything, this line (which even the McRoll shippers have called trying too hard over in the some of the tags), just backfires when you stand it up next to logic and the three years following it. It shows you exactly why it wasn’t the real deal when Freddie said it. 

No dice, Lenkov.

If you want them together maybe should actually give the audience something of worth, like actual character growth and handling of what happened in 3.18. Because you certainly missed on having them deal with trust issues even here, while needing to physically depend on each other. And that’s an easy one to write. It could have been golden, working, and a little healing on both sides.


	4. Magical (***Not Existing Before Now***) Misogyny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>   
>   
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> 

I want to talk about this scene, again, because I really do have this one thought that just won’t go away. Keeps being insanely persistent. And it actually has absolutely nothing to do with my last post and the whole Navy qualifications thing this time. 

I want you to look at pannel three. Go up and read that one line. Seriously. I’ll wait. It’s important to me, actually, because I can’t get this whole idea/problem out of my head now that it’s in there. 

Cath is saying Steve is about to give her the sexist “women aren’t good enough for this” speech/rejection. Which she says in 3.04, about him being a caveman about the intruder who turns about to be Doris, too. 

And, correct me if I’m wrong, but when has Steve ever benched a woman for being a woman? 

The man spent four years at Annapolis where women would have been his equal. He spent fives years in Naval Intelligence where women would have been his equal. The only ‘Boy’s Club’ he’s ever been in is The SEALs, where he is trained in a manner making his skills unequal to most of the population male and female. He’s spent the last almost three years in Five-0 which is beyond pointing to women as competent as men. 

Or did I miss something? I mean, please tell me if I’m missing something, but - 

Kono is trained by all three guys as a hard as nails, kickass fighter, and she’s Steve’s first choice point sniper. Lori was outfitted with tactical vest and large guns like all the rest of Five-0. Jenna, admittedly, was handcuffed to a car, but she had absolutely no experience, and the show still showed her getting out it, unapologetically and it never happening to her, again. 

This whole season has been an unending list to Steve calling on Cath for jobs that don’t fall inside the qualifications of an Intel Officer, but give us amazing Michelle Borth BAMF’s It Up fight scenes straight from 3.01. 

But we’ve never once seen Steve actually try or succeed in benching Catherine (or any other woman), so I’m even more baffled at that line. Because it’s like seeming feminism and equality as an insult. But there’s no history to back it up. For her or for any other female character in the cast from Steve.

Unless the show wants me to believe maybe it’s from Cath’s background and having to tow twice the load as any man to be seen as worthy in the Boy’s Club of the Navy. Which, admittedly, wouldn’t be that hard to sell. The military is still a rough place. But that’s me reaching and trying to force even more logical, but unsubstantiated, assumptions into this episode.

Because then it’s her own issues she’s overcompensating for thinking will be there. Which is totally justifiable. But there’s no canon evidence to how her job is, or how her history with the Navy is, either. So I’m really. Puttering. Puttering, rutterless at this panel and it just keeps circling around and around in my head. 

Why, show. Why must you persist with victimization and lack of logic.


End file.
